Srila Prabhupada’s most important slogan is ‘Simple Living and High Thinking’, so the simpler you live, the more peaceful, blissful and happy you will become. The more complication you bring in your life, you may screw yourself up. So for that reason, we should live very simple and if you live simple, then you save yourself a lot of troubles and time. So this is the idea of simplicity, simplicity means internally simple and externally simple. We should be simple hearted and we should be very innocent hearted, we should have a clean heart. This is internal simplicity.

External simplicity means everything that I externally do, must be geared towards Krishna.

So simplicity in Krishna Consciousness means “I want to live very simple, so that I can have maximum time to practice and serve Krishna and His devotees.” So for that reason, you must design your life in such a way that you become totally peaceful, blissful, happiest and having lots and lots of time for practicing Krishna Consciousness to please Him.

Now for that you will have to draw a line between what is simple and what is complicated. The lowest level of simplicity starts with Sukhdev Goswami then Lord Shiva, then probably comes Rishabdev and then probably we can come up to Shad Goswamis. Sukhdev Goswami did not wear any clothes or did not have an arrangement of any bodily necessity.

So you have to draw that line, so you can draw line very high up and you can draw line very very low, below zero level. The more demands, requirements you have for your body, the more you will have to work for it. So in our Krishna Conscious lives, “I have seen devotees who are Srila Prabhupada’s associates and living hand to mouth, no other necessity, just serve.” Their idea is cent percent absorbed in serving Krishna and Srila Prabhupada. This is not poverty, this is opulence in Krishna Consciousness. Everybody wants to become totally blissful and enjoy that bliss, every moment for eternity.

We have seen Sudama Vipra, he goes to Dwarika for asking some kind of means to eat, in a hand to mouth situation. When he met Krishna, he forgot about everything, “ask or not ask, I have some gift or nothing “and then he goes back, thinking about Krishna, nothing, no anxiety about what my children will eat or wife will eat. Totally in bliss.

Shat Goswamis, specially Rupa, Sanatan, Raghunath Das Goswami, they were billionaire, they left everything aside and came to Vrindavan, only some cloth and only eating some buttermilk, little, not much. Little buttermilk a day, even that was not possible, they forgot about buttermilk also.

So simpler you live, the more time you can get for practicing Krishna Consciousness, which is the topmost goal of the human form of life. We should not condemn people because their line of simplicity is above ours or lower, everybody draws a different line and different level for simplicity. But you know your line of simplicity, so live within that and practice Krishna Consciousness.